Eliseu Visconti's "A Recompensa de São Sebastião"

Eliseu Visconti was a Brazilian artist who reflected about our reality. His conclusion was that we did not have an artistic past and to build a future would demand a great effort. Visconti was the first artist of the new Republican government to win a trip prize and when he came back from Paris, he brought paintings, which were in harmony with the European vanguard. Therefore he was invited to participate in the decoration of Rio de Janeiro's Municipal Theater, the two formed a unit that represented the new regime. At the Municipal Theater, Visconti painted the foyer and many other parts.

In France, Visconti had been Grasset's pupil, master of the Art Nouveau, and two of his paintings: "Juventude" and "As Óreades" won the silver medal in the Universal Exposition in Paris, 1900, which had the electricity as a theme.

Visconti was not simply in search of beauty for the sake of beauty. Although pure beauty was the paradigm of his times, Visconti, who was an avid reader of the Latin classics, such as Dante, was in reality inspired by Ruskin, therefore, he was not interested in the autonomy of beauty, he was more interested in presenting beauty as an alternative for a world that was beginning to be dominated by the technique, the machine, and the industry, that is, where the human being was starting to vanish.

It was not important for Visconti to have a defined style; he was more interested in the rational use of elements of different styles, the visual research and experimentation. He called himself an artist of his time.

"A Recompensa de São Sebastião", which was painted in the same year, as "Juventude" is a good example of the painter's filiation to the Pre-Raphaelite movement, inspired by Ruskin and his idea that beauty is either in nature or it is an imitation of it.

However, it is not enough to classify Visconti as a Pre-Raphaelite. His creativity was bigger than that; "A Recompensa de São Sebastião" has even a medieval touch in the gold of the hair and of the details of the angel's clothes and also in the necklace and tiara of the figures on the right side. Visconti was also a pioneer of the modern design in Brazil and he used his creativity to make stationery, lamps, a Santos Dumont's poster, stamps, etc.

According to Moraes, Visconti, was even more important than the artists of the Semana de 22, who only imported individual styles, he was capable of capturing the spirit of his time.

Work Cited: Moraes, F. Curso de arte brasileira (audio tape). Rio De Janeiro: MNBA.